and shadows still remain
by pencil gal
Summary: Every night she dreams of him. Every night she saves him. Set between Seasons 1 and 2


**Disclaimer: **_Heroes_ belongs to Tim Kring and the NBC. I make no profit from writing this story.

_A/N: _Written for the heroesfest LJ community.

**and ****shadows still remain**

Every night she saves him.

---

It has been sixty-four days since that night (Claire knows, she's been counting). And in that time she's come up with sixty-four different ways that she could have saved him. Some of them involve leaving New York, some of them involve killing Radioactive Man before he had the chance to meet him, and in some of them she dies (even though Claire knows she can't, not really). But in one way every dream is the same.

Peter lives. She saved him.

When she wakes up in the mornings she wants to cry. She tries so hard to hold onto the dreams but every morning she's dragged harshly back to reality. A reality where she has a different name (she's not Claire Bennet anymore, she's not even Claire Petrelli, she's stuck with Claire Butler and she hates it) and lives in a different town and has been pushed into a new life under the guise of protection. A reality in which her Dad is still keeping secrets (Claire doesn't know what they are yet but she's sure the secrets are connected to her somehow, they always are) and her bio-dad ignores her calls, and the man who saved her life is dead because she couldn't save him.

She knows the dreams aren't real but she so badly wishes they were. Because she doesn't know how much longer she can keep living with the reality that has been forced on her. (Claire thinks that if he was just still living then maybe she'd be able to cope with all the lies and pretence and fake names so much better. But he's not and she can't.)

She sometimes thinks of killing herself but knows that a quick slash to the wrists or a jump off a building won't do it. Short of a bullet to the brain (Claire knows the spot, he knew that she knew it) nothing will work. She wonders what he would have thought about the fact that she'd even considered that bullet, he who had valued life above everything else. She knows that he would have been disappointed to know that she had thought about taking her life (the very same life that he had worked so hard to save).

Peter wanted her to live. (Only for him does Claire give up the thoughts of bullets.)

And so she was stuck living with the pain during the day and the dreams at night.

---

They were standing in the middle of the desert.

They hadn't known where they were going to go when they got out of New York. It had to be somewhere that no one would get hurt when he exploded. Claire would live and so would Peter but they were the only two people in the world that were indestructible. Everyone else would die.

Claire had the bright idea to go to the desert. No houses, no people, no life.

And so there they were standing in the middle of the desert, waiting. For what, they didn't know. The end of the world? An explosion? Nothing at all?

Peter was facing away from her, glancing towards the car. "Peter," she murmured, not sure how she was going to continue when he looked at her.

Claire saw his body stiffen and his hands began to light up with power. Peter turned and Claire could see the fear in his eyes. "_Claire…_"

Claire moved closer to him and immediately wrapped her arms around him. "Everything will be okay," she whispered as she felt the first of the radiation waves tear through her. "I promise."

A bright light erupted all around them.

They were screaming and they were holding on tighter than ever and they were dying and they were emerging from the fire. They were alive.

Peter was alive.

---

It has been seventy days since that night (Claire has dreamed up another six ways of saving him) and she's walking down a street in Midland, Texas. She stops suddenly as she sees, from the corner of her eye, a man drop from the sky. She turns slowly with her heart pounding in her ears. She's sure that it's him, it has to be him (the only other person who can fly is Nathan and since he's not answering her calls Claire is certain he hasn't flown all this way to her little town).

She frowns when her eyes meet a very normal looking teenage boy's. Thin (but not thin enough), messy brown hair (three shades too light) and very much not Peter. She sighs as the guy walks away. She could've sworn that she had seen someone flying down to the ground but obviously she had been wrong. She turns around again to continue trekking towards her home (that isn't really a home because it's not Odessa and it has no memories and everything is wrong).

She wonders if maybe the dreams are really starting to get to her if she's now hallucinating and seeing him in people that really are nothing like him at all.

---

It has been seventy-nine days since that night (Claire's diary isn't about cheerleading and crushes anymore, now its pages are filled with dreams and rescue missions and him). She's lying on her bed and her cell phone is clutched tightly against her chest. She dials a now very familiar number and holds the phone to her ear, wondering if this time he'll pick up.

"Claire, what do you want?" are the first words she hears spoken in Nathan's tired voice. (Claire almost feels indignant that he couldn't even bring himself to greet her properly. Almost.)

"Are you sure he's dead?" If he was going to be direct and to the point then she would be too. "I mean, really, really sure?"

"He's dead. You need to move on. We all do."

She frowned and tried to hold back the tears she could feel forming. "But he can heal Nathan! He can regenerate. He has to be alive!" She was getting hysterical and she knew it (Claire couldn't bring herself to care though).

"I was there Claire," Nathan sounded like he was almost dead too, there was so little emotion in his voice. "I watched him die. Peter is not coming back. Accept it." Nathan hung up the phone before she could say anything else.

"Damn you, Nathan!" she screams as she throws her phone at the wall. (Claire hopes that it doesn't break because she doesn't want to explain to her Dad why she needs a new phone.)

She rolls over and grabs her diary as the tears begin to fall slowly. She figures since she's already hurting, she might as well torture herself further by reading back through the dreams. They're all there, all seventy-nine of them. She relives every single one of them and wishes that she was still nine when she believed that all her dreams would come true.

She wonders if any of this (the pain, the dreams, the sharp, jagged emotions) will ever stop. (Claire wonders if she even wants it to. Because Claire knows that if it does, if the dreams stop, then she'll really have nothing left to hang on to.)

---

Claire stands there shaking as he turns to her. She can feel the trigger underneath her finger. All she has to do is pull it, just like he told her to. She can save the world if she just shoots him.

Peter was staring at her, his eyes pleading with her, begging her to do it, to end it, to kill him. But Claire can't do it, she won't. Save the world… and kill Peter Petrelli. She starts to lower the gun and her eyes dart away from his. She can't look him in the eye as she refuses to save them all.

As Nathan drops down between them, Claire spots a broken shard of glass lying by the fountain. Nathan's talking, saying something about there being another way but she isn't listening. Claire runs to the fountain, there's no time to think about anything else, grabs the glass and then she's back next to Peter and then the glass is lodged in the back of his skull and he's falling and Nathan and Claire are lying him down gently.

Claire kneels down next to him and grabs his hand. She's only seen Peter like this (_dead_) once before and she hated having to do it and God, she just hopes this works.

She can feel the radiation pulsing into her hand, but as Peter's body grows colder Claire can feel the radioactive waves weakening and finally disappearing altogether. Peter was dead. She can feel Nathan watching her and the others moving closer as she takes a breath and closes her eyes for a moment. Still holding onto Peter's hand, Claire grabbed hold of the glass shard and pulled it back out.

Peter's eyes widened and his torso lifted up slightly, taking in a huge breath, as he came back to life. The first thing he sees is her. "_Claire…_"

She grinned as tears ran down her face. She did it. She saved the world… and Peter Petrelli.

Peter was alive.

---

Every night she dreams of him.

Every night she saves him.


End file.
